Today’s conversation turned out to be some of the most practical, actionable advice we’ve ever given on the AYG podcast.

Ryan Snow is a #1 best-selling author, sales leader, business coach, and teacher. With extensive experience in the classroom and many years of work as a coach and mentor, his mission is to help people achieve extraordinary results in life, and in sales, through personal and professional development.

Furthermore, Ryan inspired me to write The Miracle Morning book series—and for that, I’m forever indebted to him. Together, we co-authored The Miracle Morning for Salespeople, and Ryan has since been offering hugely popular workshops based on the book all over the country.

Today, Ryan joins the podcast for a deep dive into his 5 Gs of Goal Setting. We talk about dreaming big, setting yourself up for future success (especially if you don’t love what you’re doing right now), and how to conquer your bad habits through accountability.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

How to redefine your future and start doing what you truly love to do.

The #1 mistake people make when setting goals—and how not to fall into this common trap.

Why leadership helps to make and keep us accountable.

What to do when you don’t meet your goals—and how to tap into your best habits to overcome setbacks.

AYG TWEETABLE

[ctt template=”12″ link=”80Yux” via=”yes” ]If you make the pain of punishment for not achieving your goal bigger than the pain of doing the activity in order to hit your goal, you’re going to hit your goal every time. – Ryan Snow[/ctt]

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CONNECT WITH HAL

TRANSCRIPT

Hal: Ryan Snow. Man, so tell me where you guys went for the last this recent trip.

Ryan: Yeah. So, we just got back from Cabo San Lucas.

Hal: Nice. I love Cabo. We actually had a timeshare. We go out there every other year I think, every other year. So, you’re down there with Marylin and then who else? The M1 Crew?

Ryan: So, the M1 Group, the breakoff sort of from GoBundance and like a group coaching program that I’m part of. We stayed in this huge $12 million mansion. There’s like 30 of us in the house right on the coast like built into the side of a cliff. The place was amazing.

Hal: Wow. That’s epic. That is epic. Wow. $12 million mansion. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a $12 million mansion. That’s pretty cool. So, you give a talk down there?

Ryan: I did. Yeah. I gave a talk on clarity of vision actually. I’m going to talk a little bit about what we might touch base on today.

Hal: Nice. So, for those listening, this is Ryan Snow that I’m talking with here. Ryan Snow is the co-author with yours truly of the Miracle Morning for Salespeople. And, Ryan, you probably heard me reference before, he’s not just a co-author. He’s literally although he is not, well, he’s the idea guy. He’s the guy that called me and said, “Hal, have you ever thought to do a book series for the Miracle Morning?” and I was like, “I haven’t thought about it. Why? Why do you ask?” And he said, you can tell me if I get this wrong, Ryan, but I think you basically said, “Since I’ve read the Miracle Morning sort of implementing it, my sales have increased, and I’ve taught it with my sales team. And all of my sales team that’s read the book and implemented the Miracle Morning, their sales have increased. So, you should do like a customized version for salespeople with unique affirmations and this and that,” And I said, “Dude, you want to co-author with me? Let’s do it. That’s a cool idea.” That’s about literally how the Miracle Morning book series was born. So, Ryan, I will be forever indebted to you for that spark that you had, man.

Ryan: Yeah. No, and I to you for making me the co-author on the book and what a ride it has been. It’s been great. Now, I’m running around teaching that class and doing the one-day Miracle Morning for Salespeople workshop all over the place so…

Hal: So, you’re now like required. You’re going to be required to like scale, right? You’ve got to bring on other teachers, trainers to teach it because you’re in too much demand, too many requests?

Ryan: Yeah. That’s the thing. So, I was doing one a month last year and I had a full-time job. I was running a KW office at the time and I recently quit that job in November of 2017 so I’ve been traveling around doing three or four of this a month and we’ve got more people asking to do them and I committed to my wife that I would only travel one week out of a month so I could spend time with the family and so, yeah, now we’re actually hiring other trainers to be able to expand the program.

Hal: Crazy man. Congrats. That’s exciting. Super exciting. So, today we’re going to talk about the five Gs of goalsetting and being that it’s the Achieve Your Goals Podcast, this is a very targeted discussion that we’re going to have today. Five Gs of goal setting. Give a little bit on your background in terms of when did you start setting goals? Was this like something you learned from your father or mother as a child when you were setting goals or was it something that you learned when you were in sales or when did you really become a goal setter and a goal achiever?

Ryan: Yeah. So, I think that my parents always sort of just held high standards. I don’t know if it was particularly goals but – so I always held high standards for myself and I don’t know if I called them goals until maybe when I got my college age and started with Cutco. Right around the time you and I met is probably when I started like writing down specific things that I would call goals and going after them. So, at least the last like 18 years or so I’ve been doing this but unofficially I would say since I was like a teenager probably.

Hal: Right on, man. Right on. You obviously achieved some extraordinary goals personally and professionally from when you were doing it when you were with KBW and then now branching off and doing your own things and creating, co-authoring the book and then creating the workshops and this and that. So, let’s dive in. So, the five Gs of goal setting you can set the stuff any way you want or I want to know what the first G is. I’m curious. It’s like when you learn, well, I think that’s why the four Ps of productivity or the five Gs of goal setting like I think is so effective because our brain opens that loop that we want closed like, “Dude, what’s the first one? What’s the next one? I need to know all five.” So, let’s dive in. What’s the first G of goal setting?

Ryan: Yeah. I love it. It makes them easy to remember too sort of like the SAVERS do for the Miracle Morning. So, the first one is grand vision is the first one. So, I think of grand vision sort of like Simon Sinek’s idea of Start with Why. So, it’s like the underlying theme for most people that what’s most important to them in their life and their business. So, when I’m talking about grand vision it’s usually like it’s when you’re giving yourself permission to dream as big as you possibly can. It’s something that you probably don’t have the plan for how you would actually go about achieving it. It’s just something that you know that you want and it’s important to you. It’s probably years down the road. Maybe five years out, 10 years out.

Hal: So, yeah, this is a great point. I had a friend yesterday that called me for just kind of some like big picture just life and business advice and he’s very successful. I think he’s doing like $2 million a year in revenue in his business that he started from scratch and very successful. Makes a great income but he just realized over the years and I think more and more recently that he is not in love with what he’s doing and I think that a lot of people listening probably could relate to that like work isn’t a means to an end and I think we’ve all been there before and a lot of us are still there where we work to pay the bills but we don’t really love our work. Maybe we even don’t like our work or as far as hate it, but we need a paycheck. We got to put food on the table. We got to pay our rent, our mortgage, etcetera. And so, but he realized he goes, “Man, what’s the point? I’m not enjoying my work which is roughly half of my life,” in terms of how many hours a day he’s at the office. Anyway, long story short, he was talking about like what he needs to do now, and I said, “I think we need to do now is not worry about what you need to do now. You need to step back and look at what you want to be doing a year from now or three or five or 10 years from now and really just write that get real detailed clarity on that and then work backward to today. And that might mean that you keep doing what you’re doing for the next year or two or whatever to put yourself in position to do what you ultimately want to do.”

But I think that what you’re talking about is so important for us that we often are we’re always focused on the now. We might go with what’s happening today and what’s my life like today? How do I feel about this and this creates stress for me and etcetera, etcetera, versus all right, if life’s not perfect right now that’s okay and how do I want it to be? And stepping back and you called it the grand vision, looking at the grand vision. So, what do you suggest people in terms of making this actionable? Is this writing one, three, five, 10-year vision? What does somebody from this call what do they schedule an hour later today or tonight to do to implement this first G of goal setting?

Ryan: I love that question. Yeah. So, this is actually an exercise that we do in the Miracle Morning workshop with everybody and so the two things we have them do is write “In Five Years” and then just a blank piece of paper and “In 10 Years”. And what I want them to think about is what do they want? How are they going to spend their time? What will their relationships look like? Where will they live? What are their finances going to look like? What will their business look like? Who’s on their team? So, if they run a business, who are they adding to their team? How are they leveraging some of those things that maybe they don’t want to do? It’s not just the people don’t like – some people really like work, but they don’t like the trade-off. They don’t like the priorities they’re giving up in order to have that.

So, I want them to look at all aspects and what’s that look like in five years and what’s that look like in 10 years? And really dig in and get some clarity around. And again, answering this question as if it were in a perfect world because there are so many things that are going to shift and change over the next five years or 10 years that we can’t even comprehend the idea of what we could potentially accomplish in five years or 10 years. So, one of the things in setting this exercise up that I ask people to do is to look back at five years ago or 10 years ago and just ask yourself the question like could you ever imagined that you would’ve grown this much or that things would’ve changed this much since five years ago? Or since 10 years ago? Because a lot of times it’s like incomprehensible the fact that we can grow that much like Bill Gates has that quote, “We always overestimate the change that’s going to occur in the next two years and we underestimated the change that’s going to occur in the next 10.”

Hal: I thought that was Eminem. I’m just kidding. Keep going. No, that’s great. It’s a great point.

Ryan: We don’t want it to stop somebody from going after something bigger just because they don’t necessarily know how they would get there or they’re afraid that it’s too big or too much or that they don’t deserve it yet. We’re just sort of dreaming as big as possible. If they could have everything, what would it look like?

Hal: Yeah. The further out that we go I think the more we could remove our self-imposed limitations because the more there is the whole well, yeah, so 10 years from now, shoot, who knows? What can I do? Maybe I can make millions and millions and millions or I could run a marathon. I could do anything if it’s like one-year goals are – and this is why it’s grand vision step is so important because one-year goals are riddled with self-imposed limitations and rightly so. There’s only so much you can do in one year and to your point, Bill Gates, I guess we overestimate what we can to in a year, underestimate what we can do in ten. I love it, man. All right. So, we got a grand vision, the first G of goal setting. If you’re listening to this, Achieve Your Goals Podcast listeners, goal achievers, obviously do this. Sit down and do this. It’s something we should be doing at least once a year if not regularly just for our mental health and just to get a bigger picture of our future and what’s possible for all of us. So, I love it. All right, man. Keep going.

Ryan: Yeah. So, number two is goals. So, in goal setting we’re going to set some goals and these are shorter-term so these are going to be like the annual goals and the quarterly goals so where the grand vision is about dreaming big, the goals are about like narrowing the focus a little bit more and saying, “Okay, if I can only focus on a few things in the next quarter or the next year, what are the most important ones that are going to help me take the next steps to be able to live out that grand vision?” And we need to have goals. We have to have the big dream and the hopes piece and then we need to have the broken-down goals so that we can actually set out action plans to create it and make it happen. It’s not just going to happen on its own. So, understanding that end destination is going to allow us to sort of reverse engineer that plan.

Hal: Got you. Yeah. I love it. It’s so funny. Goal setting is such an elementary thing in terms of most of us if we’re entrepreneurs or in sales or successful, we’re taught to set goals but every time I hear a message like this, usually I’m not going, “Wow, I never heard anything like that before,” but I’m going, “Damn it. I’m not doing that.” I forget those fundamentals and those basics. In fact, that’s actually coming off of last year’s cancer journey for me. That is actually my number one like my theme for this year is to get back to basics. That’s my theme. Get back to basics, get back to what works meaning the SAVERS, all of the personal development practices every day, the Miracle Morning, goal setting, health, and fitness. It’s just like the basics, the fundamentals of goal achievement are really what I’m focusing on and getting back to this year, really simplifying. Not trying to learn the newest craziest latest cutting-edge thing but just getting back to what’s gotten me here and I think that for all of us that’s something we can always revisit and always look at.

Ryan: Yeah. And a couple of things too that I feel like people make the same mistakes over and over again when they start setting these goals. So, the number one mistake that I would see with most people that I’ve either coached or had in training is that their goals are arbitrary in a sense that they might just pick a number because they feel like it’s the right next thing for them to do and not necessarily because it actually makes sense for where they’re at and where they’re taking their people or their team or where they want to take their health. They’re just picking it because it makes sense like, “I’m going to double my business this year.” Okay. Well, why? Why are you going to double your business? And what does that look like? And do you really want to work as many more hours as you’re going to need to? Or are you committed to hiring a number of employees you would need to hire in order to do that? And so, actually, it’s taking some time to look at doing these goals actually keep me on track for the vision that I said that I wanted in the grand vision?

Hal: Got you. Okay.

Ryan: Another one would be the need for immediate results. So, that idea that we need to make the goal so big this year because we have to grow like vertically each year a little bit in order to keep on track but that’s not really how growth happens. Like, if you look at most growth patterns for people and for businesses they look like that hockey stick or it’s kind of flat for a while and you just keep doing the activity and then you get like this stick end at the end. So, even if we have this huge ridiculous goal for five years out or 10 years out that’s part of the grand vision, it doesn’t mean that we need to do a fifth of that or a tenth of that this year. And so, making sure that we’re planning accordingly based on where we currently are and knowing that some of that growth is going to happen rapidly towards the end from just doing the right things this year, not trying to cram it all in right at the beginning and front-load everything.

Hal: Got you. Yeah. That’s a really great point.

Ryan: And then the last one is the idea of too many goals. So, I think the best place to put people is like go to the one thing. The one thing isn’t about having one goal. It’s about having one key goal in each of the areas that are going to make other goals sort of happen and make it easier or unnecessary to do these other things because people write down like 10 or 20 or 30 goals that they’re going to accomplish in a year. And so as soon as they do that, they dilute everything, and they don’t spend enough time on the ones that really are the most important to them. And so, having the clarity around what’s important as far as priorities I feel like would be really helpful for most people. We just came from that dad’s retreat and Jay Papasan and Jeff Woods were there talking about this and they had us write down our priorities like all of the things in life that make up priorities for us whether it’s family and health and kids and fun and job and money and then we had to rank them in order. It was so telling because it looks like, well, you can only really take care of seven. So, who’s falling in 8, 9 and 10 and do they belong there? And it was just interesting to look at.

Hal: Yeah. For me a few years ago when I set my goals, I started identifying my mission for every year and it could be a mission in each area but for me, it’s the mission. At the most, I do two missions, so I have personal and a professional and the reason I did that is just by changing the language that we use and then what we associate with that language meaning for me the way I look at it is we often set goals. We hit them. We don’t hit them. Try again new goals, new year, et cetera. I thought the level of commitment that we have to a mission like when we’re on a mission you’re fully committed to that mission. You’re fully committed to executing the mission. You think about military it’s like the mission is like if you don’t do it right, you die. So, we saw the goal. “Our goal is to go and sneak into the enemy territory and not die.” That’s a mission. You’re fully committed with every fiber of your being and when you’re that committed that you have planning that goes in and preparation and collaboration. It’s at a very high, high level. And so, for me, every year when I set my goals I go, “Okay, of all the goals that I’ve set professionally, which one if I had to pick that only one was going to happen, if none,” and this is how I get myself to figure it out, I go I got seven goals professionally and only one is going to happen and the other they absolutely cannot. I have to pick one, what is that one? What one will make the biggest impact on my business, my life, etcetera, etcetera? And then I do it personally.

Anyway, so yeah just along the line of having too many goals. I think it’s okay to have multiple goals but like you talked about that Jay Papasan and Jeff talked about at the dad’s retreat could really just prioritizing and if that helps anybody listening to call it your mission amongst your many, many goals what is your mission either professionally and personally or if you want to really look at if you have to create a mission in each area, your mission in your health, your mission in your finances, your mission in your marriage, etcetera.

Ryan: Yeah. No, I love that and what I love about what you just said too is that level of commitment so what’s your commitment and how are you showing that you’re committed to those top-level goals.

Hal: Yeah. Great point. All right. What’s our third G?

Ryan: All right. So, number three is the game plan so once we have the goals and we sort of set the end dates for the quarter or the month, we need some sort of plan as to how we’re actually going to take action and put them into play. So, at first, breaking them down. It could seem daunting when you pick like one of your goals let’s say so we want to break it down into like daily and weekly activities that we need to do. And so, they have to be scheduled as daily, weekly, and monthly activities. I actually break mine down and color code them as to what needs to be done every day, every week or every month.

Hal: Got you. Monthly, weekly, daily activities. Okay

Ryan: The next piece is similar to the smart goals piece, they need to be measurable. So, for instance, like when training for half marathon, the game plan for this week can’t be running. The game plan might be run 3 miles on Monday, 4 miles on Thursday, long run of 8 miles on Saturday. There’s no question of whether or not I fulfill my obligation to stay on track with the goal.

Hal: Got you. Yeah. So, measurable. So, it’s important measurable, not just the goal itself but the game plan, the activity. I think that’s an important distinction. That’s often not taught. It’s like, yeah, you set your smart goals but being measurable but this might be the first time I’ve heard that anybody talk about that your game plan and your activity needs to be measurable as well. So, really good point. Yeah. For me like when I was in sales it was the 20 calls a day or for when I double my sales, 40 calls a day. I can really easily manipulate those numbers to achieve the goal based on how relative they were, and then the same thing when I was training for the ultramarathon to your point about can’t just be run this week. I was following a game plan for a book called The Non-Runner’s Marathon Trainer and it told me exactly to run 2 miles today, 2 miles tomorrow, 3 miles on Wednesday, 2 miles and then five then long run on Saturday of 10 miles or whatever. Yeah. Really great point. Okay. Go ahead.

Ryan: Yeah. And so, the last little piece, well, I guess there’s two more but the big one is the idea of this fact that you have to have faith in a plan like you have to believe that it’s going to work so it’s sort of like the miracle equation once we have at the end of the Miracle Morning for Salespeople book which is that idea that if you don’t have faith in the fact that following this plan is going to get you to the end goal that you wanted then why would you put in the effort. You won’t actually do the activity if you don’t believe that doing the activity is going to get you what you wanted in the end.

Hal: Yeah. That’s great. And I think that’s an important point to the goal overall. If you don’t really have faith that you can reach the goal, you’re not making the game plan probably. Why make the game plan if you don’t believe you can reach the goal and if you reach the goal but you don’t have faith in the game plan, why actually implement the game plan? So, really great stuff.

Ryan: And then two questions that are sort of guiding questions that I think some people missed the boat on in doing their planning Is, do the activities that I’m saying that I’m going to do actually fit in my calendar with my other priorities? And do the activities fit in my budget? So, I think of this as when I was training real estate agents, for instance, farming is one of the ways that real estate agents grow their business. So, they mail out to a group of individuals and they attempt to get business from like a neighborhood let’s say. And so, they made plans to mail to 1,000 individuals and farming is one of those things that takes time. It’s 18 to 24 months before you start to see a return on any of your investment. If I go in planning on saying, “I’m going to mail to 1,000 people every single month in order to hit my goal of getting X number of transactions from that farm and I’ve only got in my budget enough to spend that money for six months and then I don’t have the money anymore then I can’t follow through the activity I said I was going to do to hit my goal.

So, you need to make sure that it fits in their schedule, one, that they’re going to actually have time to do the activity but then, two, are they going to be able to maintain the activity for the entire amount of time that it’s going to take to get the result? Because otherwise, they’re just wasting money and time and they’re going to fall short of their goal.

Hal: Got you. That makes sense. So, do the activities fit in my calendar? Do the activities fit into my budget? I love it. All right. We are on to the fourth G of goal setting.

Ryan: We are. So, the fourth G of goal setting is guidance and that comes down to the fact that we can learn from successes and mistakes of others or from our own and I found that learning from my own mistakes usually cost me a lot more money than learning from mistakes of others. So, that guidance could come in lots of different forms. It could come from a book or a webinar or a workshop. It could come from a training or an online course or in best case scenario probably a mentor or coach. Some are going to have a higher level of learning because of the ongoing nature of them like coaching or training or mentor and the ability to interact and ask one-on-one questions I feel like is probably the fastest way but again it depends on whether or not that’s in your budget. You’re not going to have a coach for every single goal probably unless you can afford that, so you got to figure out like which resources make sense based on this particular goal.

Hal: Got it. And even if you did, even if you could afford it, you wouldn’t have any room in your calendar for activities because you’re doing coaching call all the time.

Ryan: All day every day.

Hal: That are people that do that, right? I mean, personal, in fact, we’ve all probably been there. Different phases of personal development junkies. It’s like, “Oh yeah, I’m reading more books than ever.” It’s like, “Are you doing anything with it?” “Well, no, no, no I’m just reading a lot.” It’s like we think that’s the goal or that’s the winner. “If I read these books then I’ll achieve what I want,” but obviously the actions won’t matter. All right. So, with guidance, we’ve got learning from mistakes and the success of others and again that could be books, training, coaching, etcetera. What else?

Ryan: So, I think another thing you sort of pointed out is the fact that you need to make sure that it’s tailored to the goals and to the vision. It has to be connected to the grand vision and to the goals because if we just set out to read like everything we can to learn then we don’t focus enough on what we need to go do. And so, choosing the path, once we choose the path, we don’t need to learn every possible way to achieve the goal. We need to become masters at the one or two ways that we set out that we were going to do it like what’s in the game plan, what do we need to learn in the game plan? How do we stay on track for that game plan? Now, let’s learn everything there is to know in that entire area.

Hal: Got it. So, quality over quantity when it comes to your strategies?

Ryan: Yeah. And we read like if you’re getting from books or you’re getting from classes, don’t go out and take 20 different classes or read 20 different books. Get two or three books on the topic and then read them two or three times as you’re going through the activity because you’re learning, changing, and growing and you’re going to take different things from it each time you go through it.

Hal: Got you. Yeah. I’m a huge fan of rereading versus… I think we read something, we’re exposed to the information. We read it, we really internalize it and understand it at a deeper level so awesome.

Ryan: The next major piece of guidance is the accountability factor of it so who’s holding you accountable for the things that you said you’re going to do? People will say that integrity is the most important thing to them like if you ask most people they’ll say trust, integrity. Those are the things that end up for them as the most important and if they make an appointment with somebody else, they’ll pretty much always uphold it. So, for most people they said to their mom like, “Hey, mom, I’m going to be there on Saturday to help you do this,” they’re going to show up. Or if they told their best friend they’re going to come help them move, they’re going to show up. But if they write something on their calendar that they’re supposed to do, just for themselves to stay on track with their own goals it’ll be the first thing that they’ll let slide.

And so, they need somebody else to hold them accountable because we don’t want to look bad in front of other people. It’s actually a way for people to use the fact that we try and avoid pain as a motivator to keep them on track is to tell somebody else that they’re going to do something because then they’re going to be more accountable to the fact that they need to get it done. And even if it’s for themselves.

Hal: For you, I’m just curious, personally, what are your sources for accountability? What have they been in the past?

Ryan: Yeah. No, I have several of them. Great question. I have one-on-one coaches in certain areas so like I just wrote another book and I hired Honoree as my coach to keep me on track for the book so that we would launch on time and we would make sure to do the right thing as far as marketing and advertising.

Hal: And Honoree will kick your butt. You know that from co-authoring the real estate book.

Ryan: I do. She’s a freaking rock star. So, I hired a one-on-one coach for that. I have a group coaching program and the M1 program that I’m part of and within that is a pod that I’m part of with five or six other individuals and we have calls every two weeks and we talk about our 90-day goals and where we are on track for them and we make commitments to them. So, we have to reward ourselves when we hit our goals and we create punishments for ourselves for when we don’t follow through and get our stuff done. And the idea is that some people are getting more motivated by the pleasure, to seek pleasure part of having a reward and some people are going to be more motivated by the avoid pain piece of having to do the punishment. So, if you make the pain of the punishment worse than the pain of the activity you need to do to hit your goal, then you’re more likely going to stick to the goal and get the activity done.

Hal: Say that again. If you make the pain… Say it again.

Ryan: Yeah. So, if you make the pain of the punishment for not achieving your goal bigger than the pain of doing the activity in order to hit your goal, you’re going to hit your goal every time.

Hal: Yeah. That’s a great point. I read a book like 15 years ago called Following Through and that was the premise of the entire book was that set yourself up with consequences and there’s the positive psychology movement that goes kind of against this but I think there are the lessons to learn from both and it was again that idea that will do more to avoid pain than will gain pleasure. If we would do enough to gain pleasure, everyone in the world would be ultimately successful because well there’s enough pleasure available to work hard enough. But we tend to work hard enough to avoid the pain of losing our house or not being able to buy food or you know what I mean? So, I think most of us we can relate to that and having the consequence that is painful enough to get us into action at least until we get the habits in place from taking those actions consistently.

Ryan: Right. And we talk about this in the workshop too because I feel like this is something that comes up a lot for people. A lot of the issue behind this isn’t necessarily like whether or not we’re more averse to for the avoid pain piece or seek pleasure is better. It’s typically the pain is closer and so there is power in that proximity to the idea that my goal is at the end of the year. I will have sold X and that’s going to allow me to go in this vacation or buy this thing for my kids or whatever and that’s the end of the year but the fact that I have to make the 20 calls is today. So, right now I have to get on the phone. So, if the call is the source of pain and we don’t have some sort of like closer reward for making the 20 calls, if we don’t pull that pleasure forward or make the pain of not hitting the goal bigger then we’re always going to fall prey to avoiding the pain right now which is making the call or getting on the treadmill or whatever the goal is that you’re setting out to do, there’s going to be pain involved in that activity. Otherwise, it will be simple, and everybody will do it all the time.

Hal: Yeah. That’s a really great distinction. I hope people don’t miss that which is that you either need immediate pleasure or immediate pain set up so that you can immediately take action that you needed to take to follow through and that’s where coaching like having a weekly coach from you and I, the one-on-one coach years ago really helped me develop the discipline and those habits to follow through because when I’d be sitting there and going, “I don’t really feel like making calls,” then that voice in my head of, “I gave my word to Jeff, my coach,” and I’m talking to him on Tuesday like three days. I can’t be out of integrity and be lame and tell him, “I didn’t actually follow through with what I said I was going to do.” Yeah. Really, really great, man.

Ryan: And sometimes that pleasure is not that exciting like so health for example like it’s important to me that I’m healthy because I want to spend time with my kids or whatever but like the bad part of not being healthy might be like 60 years out. So, that’s not a motivator for me to want to go to the gym like I don’t love to go to the gym. There are lots of things I’d rather do but I know that it’s important that I maintain my health that I exercise, and people talk about it all the time, so I have to put other things in place. So, I know like last time I was in the best shape of my life. I know this because I’m doing it right now was 10 years ago. I ran the half marathon when I think it was the same year you ran the ultramarathon for Front Row Foundation and that was when I was in the best shape. That’s when I weighed the least. That’s when I had the most muscle. That’s when I was eating right.

And so, this year I have decided that I wanted to get back in the best shape of my life. I quit my job. I was going to have time. I had no excuses why not to do it. I just don’t like to go. So, I signed up for half marathon again and I was like, “Okay. Well if I sign up I’ll do it.” I’m like, “Yeah. Maybe I won’t.” So, I called three or four guys that I’m friends with who are in great shape that live locally, and I get them to sign up for the same half marathon because what I knew about myself is I wouldn’t let them down like I wouldn’t not show up and run with them after I made these guys sign up. And so, that’s been the impetus for me to go to the gym is the fact that the pain of letting those guys down in 60 days is far worse than the pain of getting on the treadmill for a few miles, few days a week.

Hal: I love that. That’s my favorite form of accountability is being a leader of a group that you are leading to accomplish a certain result. Back with Cutco, you know that I formed that ultimate team where we call in like 20 other top salespeople on the call and I would make commitments to what I was going to do and then gets their commitments and exactly what you said which is every day when I didn’t feel like making those calls, I’m like, “I can’t. I’m the leader of this group.” I can’t show up to our call on Sunday and be like, “Oh, did you guys do your stuff? Me? No, I didn’t do it, but I want to make sure that you guys did because that’s what we’re here for.” You couldn’t do that. So, my favorite form of accountability is leading a group to achieve the result that you’re working towards and also because it’s a fulfilling form of accountability because not only are you holding yourself accountable in being a leader but you’re helping other people. So, to me, it’s a bunch of needs. You hit the need for contribution, the need for accountability, etcetera, etcetera. So, yeah, man, really great.

Ryan: Yeah. Those are the relationships and there are so many benefits to do it as a group like that.

Hal: Yeah. Absolutely. All right. Then are we on G number five?

Ryan: Yeah. So, G number five is get it done. Like the activity piece. So, I sort of joke about this because The Secret is a really great book about the power of positive thinking, but I always think that there’s a missing chapter which is the part where you’re like you get off your butt and that you actually do something to make some of these things happen. And so, if you’ve gone about setting the grand vision and writing the goals down and breaking down the game plan and you’ve got yourself some guidance and accountability for it, well then checking the measurables of the activity every single week and making sure that you’re hitting those is the easiest way to tell if you’re going to hit the goal or not.

Like if I walk up to somebody and let’s say we’re talking about sales just because that’s the background and Dave said, “Here’s my goal. Here’s what I’m going to do. This is my game plan,” and I look at their game plan and it says, “Well, I’m going to make 30 calls a day,” let’s say and I say, “Great. Well, how many calls did you make yesterday?” If the answer is not 30, they’re not on track. Like it doesn’t matter if they made all the calls that they need to make the six weeks prior to that. If they’re not consistently doing the thing they said they’re going to do every day and actually getting the activity done, then they’re going to fall short because it’s so easy for that to build up. If you didn’t make 30 yesterday, what makes you think you’re going to make 60 tomorrow?

Hal: Yeah. And I think that’s an important piece too is if we do miss especially when it comes to sales like numbers like that. Even if you miss that’s what I used to when I coach sales reps, they go, “Oh yeah, I missed my calls yesterday or I missed some calls, but I’ll make my calls tomorrow.” I go, “No, no, no. You can’t just make your calls tomorrow. You have to make up the calls that you missed.” Because that accumulation at the end of the year if you miss a 30-call day and you do average 1.5 a week of those, that’s 45 calls a week for 50 weeks, what is that? 2,000 calls that you didn’t make that were needed for the law of averages to work in your favor and allow you to reach your goals. So, I think it’s important that when it comes to exercising, I don’t know if that means that you need to run to make up all your miles. I would say that you do but I think it’s important to realize that when you miss something you got to look at, okay, A, I can’t miss again, B, how am I going to make those up over the next days or weeks?

Ryan: Right. And what needs to change to make sure that I don’t mess again? Because you’re also giving yourself permission that it’s okay not to do it. And so as soon as we do that, you’ve broken the habit piece again. So, think about the way that you talk about in the Miracle Morning that idea of the first 10 days of being unbearable so every time we start missing and flipping, we go back to the unbearable where we have to like will ourselves to go do the activity again because it takes us out of that automaticity and so now we’re starting over and maybe not if we miss one day because we were sick but as soon as we give ourselves permission to make that a habit, it’s so much easier to start the bad habit again than it is to maintain the good habit. So, one day or two days or one day next week and then two weeks later one day again, every single time we’re sort of letting in the bad habit of not committing to the activity again and it’s really difficult to be the person who has it as a habit when we allow ourselves to slip and break the habit.

Hal: Yeah. Never let one bad day turn into two. That’s my self-imposed rule. If I miss a day, don’t beat yourself up but recommit. Really recommit. Don’t let one bad day turn into two. All right. So, get it done. Any other tips on getting it done?

Ryan: Well, I think the biggest thing there is just a measure of the activity, not necessarily the results. All right. So, one of the reasons that we talk about the measurable numbers for the activity which we talked about earlier is the idea that what you talked about, the law of averages. Whether that’s health or whether that’s sales or whatever, relationships, there may be bad days. There might even be bad weeks. We might go through a strait that’s just not good like it wasn’t your best week for running. It wasn’t your best week for sales calls like it wasn’t your best week in dating. It doesn’t matter what the goal is but if we have a consistent activity that we’re doing and we’re rewarding ourselves with the activity then the results will eventually come. And if they’re not coming, two things will happen, one, by continuing the activity we’ll improve and then the other piece is if consistently we’re doing the activity, we’re doing the activity and we’re not seeing the results over and over and over again then we need to go back to four which is guidance. Who’s the coach or mentor or whatever that’s going to help redirect us to make sure that we’re doing the activity the right way?

Hal: Or even the book, right?

Ryan: Right. Reading the book.

Hal: What book have I fallen too far off track from because it’s been so long since I read it and I need to reread it? Yeah. I love it, man. I love it. So, five Gs of goals settings. We have a grand vision. Start with your five, your 10-year dream, remove the limits, imagine if anything were possible, what would that look like for you. Number two, set your goals, your annual and quarterly goals. So, work backward from that grand vision and figure out what the goals are going to be in the short-term that are going to get you to your grand vision. Number three is to make your game plan, break it down to your monthly or weekly or daily activities, make sure they are measurable, not just the goals. Make sure the activities are measurable, have faith in the plan.

And then number four is guidance. Read books on the topic. Always be learning and growing and evolving in the areas or the skill sets that you need to achieve the goals that you set. Make sure you’ve got accountability, someone that’s holding you accountable to follow through. Ryan, I talked about our favorite form of that is to lead an accountability group and it could just be you and another person. Ideally, the more people you’re leading, the more accountability there is for you. It’s easier to let that one person and kind of talk to him and get him to forget you and make excuses that you think will get you off the hook but if it’s you’re leading a group of four, five, ten people, 20 people, that’s a little harder to convince them that it’s okay that you didn’t follow through than it’s harder to convince yourself that it’s okay if you do not follow through.

And then the fifth G is get it done. Focus on the activity, the process that will get you to your goals and don’t stress about the results because there’s always good days, bad days, good weeks, bad weeks, good months, bad months, etcetera, but if you consistently follow through with the activity that you predetermined will get you to your goals, your success is essentially inevitable like Ryan said. By doing the activity more and more and more, no matter what, you’re going to get better and better and better at the activity itself. Ryan, anything to add to that? Then I want to mention you have a new book coming out but anything else said to the five Gs?

Ryan: Yeah. Now, so the one thing I would say is the idea behind the goals and the guide, the grand vision is that what most people set one of your goals they will inevitably in a lot of cases fall short and that’s okay because of who they become in the process but when they set a grand vision they tend to hit it faster. So, if they have a five-year or ten-year vision, a lot of times they’ll hit it by year three or year four and it’s because they didn’t take into account how much they were going to grow in the course of those three or four years and what new things would open up to them as far as possibilities and opportunities that were out there. Because we could only sort of see with limited vision what’s been available to us to this point, not what’s going to become available to us in the next two or three years.

Hal: I love that. I’m living proof. I can attest to that where there are so many people for example that I used to observe from a distance with admiration and like people like Joe Polish, for example, the founder of Genius Network. When I met him or I was in an event, he was there and I’m like, “Oh, that’s THE Joe Polish,” you know, capital T, capital H, Capital E. That’s THE Joe Polish and now Joe and I are buddies. We text each other and I never imagined that would happen. I didn’t know. And that’s true with a lot of these. I just interviewed Jordan Harbinger today on my podcast and I used to listen to his podcast and being at awe and be like, “Dude, this guy has like best podcast in the world,” and now we’re buddies and we’re texting each other and so in terms of the relationships that you’re going to develop. As you grow and become a better version of yourself, you attract better people into your life and people that also have grand visions and that are following these five Gs. So, really great, man. Ryan, before we get off today, you have a new book that just came out, Explosive Sales Growth in Real Estate.

Ryan: You got it.

Hal: I could guess who it’s for but tell me who’s the book for and what are they going to get out of it?

Ryan: Yeah. Now, so the book is for real estate agents. I spent the last three years running a real estate office and we grew and did over $1 billion in sales within the three years and I found myself having the same coaching conversations over and over again around having a focused lead generation plan and not spreading yourself too thin. We talk about some of the things that you and I just talked about goal achievement, but it is very detailed on 11 different lead generation strategies. And we coach people to choose just two or three of them that suit their business goals and their personalities. So, to fix something that they’re actually excited about doing the activity for in order to help them achieve their goals and build the life of their dreams and they can find it on Amazon. They can go to ExplosiveSalesBook.com directly and it will just connect them to the Amazon page and yeah, that’s the book. I’m excited about it. It hit number one in real estate sales right off the bat. It’s the number one new release in the category so things are going really well. Lots of great feedback. Already a bunch of 5-star reviews so I’m excited. I hope folks will read it.

Hal: Yeah. Anybody listening, if you are in real estate and I know we have a lot of real estate agents that listen to the podcast, obviously, I’m sure you’re going to get that book but if you are not in real estate but you have somebody in your circle of influence, somebody in your family, your friends, etcetera, give them the book. Give them the book for a gift. I think a book that could change their life is one of the best gifts you can give to somebody. So, Ryan, man, it’s always a blast to talk to you. Thanks for coming into the podcast.

Ryan: Thanks for having me, Hal. I appreciate you, brother, and thanks for all the great work you do in helping people achieve their goals.

Hal: You got it, man. Well, for everybody listening, Achieve Your Goals Podcast listeners a.k.a. goal achievers, thank you for tuning in to another episode. I hope you got as much value. I took a ton of notes. Hopefully, you could tell that when I repeat it back the overall call, but I love and appreciate you. Thanks for listening to the podcast and until next week, go out there and make somebody’s life better and I’ll talk to you soon.

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